flowers of a broken angel
by coffee-stained lips
Summary: Mascara stains only look good on my maybe-lover. / Robbie&Jade. Oneshot.


**(I need to stop writing these like I'm good at them…) This is a response to Lovely Amelie's **_**mascara stains only look good on my maybe-lover**_** prompt, which immediately made me think of Jade/Beck, but then I strayed to Robbie/Jade, which is a guilty pleasure, oh my gawd. I thought I had started to hate Robbie but then I read the fics for this ship (which is, like, two) and I**_** loved them**_**. Jade is just, like, the Shipping Queen of Victorious. André, Robbie, Beck, geez Louise!...and now I will shut up :D**

Robbie remembers coming to Hollywood Arts that first day, garnering weird and edgy looks from passersby with that puppet on his arm. They whisper, all of them, when he insists Rex is _not_ a puppet. Even in a school like this, he remains an outcast with his oddities.

His locker is right next to Jade West, a scary girl with black everywhere except on her skin where it's all pure white, and a passion for sharp things. When he introduces himself, she ignores him. He continues, unrelenting, determined to get her to at least say hi back. After a barrage of fingers poking and spit spewing, Jade turns to him, piercings glinting in the fluorescent lighting.

"I don't like you." she says, plain and simple, like a greeting. She holds no emotion (except maybe annoyance) and her lips purse dangerously, as if to say _you go ahead and cross me _– _you'll be dead before you're done._

Robbie remembers stuttering like an idiot, until managing to get out "Why?" He remembers her looking him up and down, still stony-faced, and her tongue tracing her lips delicately. He remembers her hard combat boot stomping once on his poor ratty sneaker, eliciting a girlish shriek from his mouth. He remembers her smirk.

"Because you do _that_." she says, and to this day he doesn't fully understand. All Robbie understands from that day is that Jade West is a cruel, callous person born of hellfire rather than clouds from heaven.

He also understands that she is broken.

.

Jade manages to get a boyfriend in Beck, and Robbie manages to get a friend in André and that squirrelly redhead he doesn't learn to call Cat until her ramblings of cupcakes, kitties, and glitter subside long enough for him to ask. Neither of them really minds Rex, even when he's mean to Cat, and Robbie's appreciative they don't ask questions, don't make comments. It was hard enough to make friends after the incident with Jade, who pretty much instigated a belief all at Hollywood Arts were rude ("Oh, _Jade_," André sighs when Robbie tells him during their first acting class together, "Don't mind her – she's like that to everybody.").

Robbie believes that was his last real run-in with the Devil's Mistress, but realizes it's not when André and Beck's friendship solidifies. Now he sits beside her at the lunch table, but she seems to have forgotten entirely his existence. Without her overbearing wickedness to deal with – or at least it divided equally among her close cohorts – he lets himself settle into complacency, for however long it'll last. And it lasts and lasts and lasts, and when Tori comes, he knows he's safe for life.

.

They often all lounge around in Beck's RV, a group of mismatched recluses, all stuck in different worlds. Jade ignores him for the most part, and Robbie doesn't mind at all – really, he doesn't. Sure, he feels left out sometimes in all the Jade&Beck&Tori(&sometimesCat) and Beck&Tori&André drama that slowly but steadily starts suffocating them, but he doesn't say anything. He's not supposed to anyway, he's just Robbie; not hot everybody-wants-a-piece Beck or musically gifted André with the silky-smooth voice, but he's okay being the puppet dude. Really, he is, most definitely.

_Yeah…_

.

His first kiss with Trina goes over well, until he sees she doesn't reciprocate his feelings, and he never felt much for Cat anyway, good kiss or not, but he just feels like he's still waiting for that _first kiss_. But he knows there aren't many girls willing for a Robbie over a Beck, or even an André, so he can just sit in the back with Rex and make up songs about strangers and broken glass, _'cause that's all he really knows_.

.

Even a guy like Robbie doesn't expect it when Beck&Jade becomes Beck&Tori, and Jade is forgotten in Beck's sea of exes. The rest of them are flabbergasted, even if they knew it was coming kind of, and most of them are depressed. André because of a lost love – Cat because of a lost friend – Beck because of a lost girlfriend (_but his new one smiles like sunshine, cushioning the blow_).

What has Robbie got to grieve over?

(Yeah, a big fat _nothing_.)

But while he can't grieve, he sees things in the cracks. He hears the sobbing from the girls' room, and when Cat speaks of black liquid running off the faucet, he gets an inkling. And when Jade stays home from school for so many days at a time and returns with her sleeves pulled over her wrists, he just _knows_ what's going on, and strangely enough it hurts him.

When no one's looking and he hears the cry as a hundred angry cries, he pushes against the door with the pink lady on it. And sure enough she's there, gripping the sink with something red in her palm, mascara running down her white-as-a-ghost face in blotchy, black currents, and her sleeves are pulled up with scars strewn across in jagged lines that _scream what cannot be said_. Just as Cat explained the faucet is running and there's black trails of water running to the drain (only there's the red lines too that Cat forgot to mention).

She turns when he comes in, and all that anguish becomes anger, terrifying anger and hatred directed at Robbie because he's there, just because. She shakes, her breathing coming in raggedy, strangled heaves. "_Get out._" she breathes, a single sentence carried by a thousand meanings.

"J-Jade?" he says. He's not quite sure what he should do in this situation; just stare in shock at the bloody mascara stains? He's not good at this. He can't be caught up in the drama, that's not _Robbie_. Robbie is standing to the side, being quiet and alone and not butting in whatsoever.

Look how that turned out.

"Get. Out!" She tries to shout, but still it comes in mangled whispers, tortured and never-ending. He doesn't move a muscle; he knows he should, should just turn around and walk away as if Jade's arms are pure and her face is clean and she's _happy&perfect_. (should just live it as a lie)

When Robbie doesn't get out as she commands, she angrily faces her reflection in the mirror, haggard and ugly to her own self. There's a pair of her favorite scissors in her hand he saw when he first came in, and right in front of him she slices her forearm in graceful crisscrosses. He's always been squeamish at the sight of blood, and here he gets positively nauseous. She weaves the scissors through her skin, ignoring the river of red that pours down her arm by the pint, in dainty circles that he soon realizes is meant to be some dark, indistinct, messed-up flower – like a white rose, he thinks, stained with red rather than a wholly red one (an imperfection, how appropriate).

As she loops one elegant line through another to make an inglorious petal, Robbie lunges forward and tries to rip the tainted scissors out of her hands, but of course she resists, and there's a tug-of-war battle right there in the girls' restroom. They spin in circles, neither relenting, neither giving up that lethal weapon, (and _some of her blood ends up on him but he doesn't care_). Eventually, someone's fingers slip –Jade's – and she's flung backward by her own force into the sink; she cracks her back painfully on the marble, and crumples onto the floor, now flooded with water among other things. He stares, not noticing the scissors in his hand and the little _plink-plink_ of his blood dripping onto the linoleum. Then, she starts to cry.

It's not as though she's never cried – she was crying when he came in – but Robbie doesn't know _why_ she's crying. Hurt? Ashamed? Bruised? Humiliated? All of the above? He can't be sure.

Dropping the scissors on the floor, he crouches next to her, bonking his head on the sink himself. Her tears run as fast as the blood had – is. Her lower lip trembles, and he's never_ever_ever seen her so vulnerable. Tori had said she saw her cry, and all of them in their close group of friends (though Jade stubbornly insists half of the group has no friendly relations toward her) had seen her upset, but this – this outweighs any pain she's ever shown – any pain Robbie has ever felt. He can tell it's worse.

"Please…" she whispers, and her breath is cold as death. "Please don't tell anyone about this…especially not Beck." Robbie nods, because it's the only thing he knows to do. Jade sniffs, and closes her eyes, leaning her head against the marble sink. He asks if she's alright, and she smirks, sadly.

"No," she answers, "but I can fake it. I always do."

.

Robbie doesn't breathe a word.

Jade's sleeves are still pulled down, she still stabs at her vegetarian burrito like it's done her wrong, and she still glowers at Tori&Beck whenever they sit – fingers intertwined like _theirs_ used to do – right beside her. She casts sideways glances at Robbie, always growling _don't screw me up_, and he knows if she could, she'd take her trusty scissors and plunge them in his own arm.

Nobody finds out, nobody tries to get Jade to lift up her sleeves just a teensy bit. It takes all Robbie has not to burn holes into her black lacy sleeves until everyone can see the skin underneath and how ruined it is. Sometimes his Rex hand quivers, and he's afraid his alter ego will spill the beans – blaming it on Rex if that should happen would only make it worse for Robbie in the end – but Rex doesn't. In fact, he doesn't notice, until André points it out, that Rex hasn't been speaking lately.

Robbie likes it that way, honestly.

.

For the first couple years Rex just sits on Robbie's uppermost shelf alongside stuffed animals and American Girl dolls (don't judge him!) long since forgotten to be loved. Robbie doesn't like him much, because he continually stares with unblinking eyes at Robbie in the middle of the night, and he's a dead-on caricature of him which frightens him – he can barely control one of himself, he can't handle another Robbie.

He keeps the creepy puppet, though, because, strangely, it smells like his dad. Yeah, his dad used to be around until he got bored and scurried off with a vixen thirteen years his junior – but that's not relevant right now. When his dad hung around, he smoked Cuban cigars that filled the entire house with a blinding, deafening cloud; his mother would yell and scream and cuss until that smoke cleared, but Robbie loved it. And, well, the puppet smells like his dad because his dad was smoking a cigar when he took him to a pawn shop, when they were supposed to go to the grocery store with his mom's money, and there were dazzling used trinkets all around. Robbie really wanted a box full of brightly colored yo-yos, all light blue and light yellow and light red; but his dad bought a filthy-looking puppet, saying "Ah, it looks j'st like ya', Rob!" (He hates being called Rob) So then it sits for years on the shelf, staring and being comatose.

After his dad leaves, for the final time, Robbie takes Rex down and inhales deeply the engraved scent of cigar smoke and muggy cologne, but mostly just the smoke. And then, when he discovers the little hole in Rex's back, Rex starts to talk. He talks crudely and meanly, and is always vicious toward Robbie, but Robbie can't seem to get up the nerve to put him back on his shelf. He listens to Rex, and he starts to believe in his words, believe their strength and power. Rex is cool, and he's everybody's dream friend – and Robbie starts to believe that Rex is the son his dad wanted; but never got.

(And that's why Rex _isn't_ a puppet: he's a son, a better son than Robbie ever was)

"Why you let that puppet talk fer ya', Robbie?" his mother demands at one supper angrily. Robbie shakes.

"I-I don't," he stutters, "He likes talking too, so I-I – I just let him – "

"Why can't you be like that puppet?" his mom asks cruelly, viciously, the same tone Rex uses when discussing Robbie's scrawny body or his fuzzy hair. "How hard is it to j'st make yer own friends? Ya' rely on that puppet too darn much! He's a darn lot friendlier and nicer to be aroun'. Ya' can't be like that puppet, c'n ya', and ya' know why?" Robbie's scared now. He's quivering with his fork in his hand, his eyes scrunched tight together as though waiting for a blow.

"'Cause you got the genes of a screw-up!" He gets knocked out of his chair; but it's because she's rocking the table, she didn't push. "'Cause yer idjit father don't have a useful bone in his darn body! He can't do nothing but screw up and start over, but ya' only get so many chances to restart! And ya' – you're gonna run out of them before you're even a teenager, 'cause _he is such a fricking loser_!" It hurts, what's she's saying; it's bottled up anger, anger at life and at her husband and at her son who can't help it if he reminds her so much of a lost love. She stares at Robbie, eyes bloodshot, until she collapses onto the floor, sobbing and writhing. Robbie runs.

When his mother begins using shards of glass against her wrists, Robbie starts to get that nauseous feeling toward blood. It spills all over the bathroom, and she doesn't mop it up – it just lies there, a pool of red he has to step around to take a pee. But he attains really good bladder control after she starts, we'll just say that.

And when he sees Jade, breaking herself on purpose over some guy who doesn't love her anymore – it reminds him so much of those horrendous years with his mother until his mamaw convinced her to seek help, and he doesn't think he can stand to see Jade lost like his mother was.

He – They, Cat and André and Beck&Tori and himself, can't stand to lose her.

.

After awhile Robbie Shapiro thinks he might be falling in love with Jade West.

And then he shakes his head, scolding himself for always falling in love with a girl who doesn't love him. But this time, it's not that she doesn't; it's that she can't.

.

Robbie thinks about Jade.

Not in that creepy way, but it could be considered creepy by certain people. He fantasizes about her being clean and her smiling and her kissing his cheek, slowly going toward his lips. He thinks about love and peace and serenity, and he wonders if he'll ever achieve that kind of splendor.

(Not if he loves Jade West he ain't)

Then some days Robbie thinks, if he must love her, that she can love him too. Without Beck with her anymore, she really doesn't have much. She relies on Cat, her best friend, and him, because, well, he's there and he's ready. Sometimes he and Cat get really close to Jade, and they hold their palms at her shoulders, rubbing soothingly (but Robbie's hand always strays near her wrist). And, sometimes, when she's not feeling up to her scorching brutality, her head _gently_ rests against his shoulder, and he tilts his chin so it _gently_ rests on her hair – like they're in love or something. What a riot.

And this is why, he calls her his maybe-lover. Because he loves her, and feels like she could love him, day by day, if he could just reel her in. But then, why take advantage? Sure, Beck&Tori has existed for six months (one hundred and eighty-one days, four thousand, three hundred and forty-four hours, two thousand sixty, six hundred and forty minutes, fifteen million, six hundred thirty-eight thousand, four hundred seconds) but Jade's wounds have not yet healed; Robbie still hears the crying in the bathroom, even if it has lessened since.

So she's his maybe-lover; and that's all she'll ever be.

_Maybe, maybe, maybe. . ._

.

Her birthday comes around soon, and everyone heads to her locker bearing gifts. She sourly accepts them all (all but Sinjin's which she backs over with her car two times at the end of the day) and stuffs them into the back of her locker to be forgotten and unused.

Robbie follows André to deliver his gift. André's is a big box with fancy blue wrapping paper and a silky red ribbon on top and a card with super-cool calligraphy; Robbie's is one of his old shoeboxes that has a weak scent of cat urine and doom (yes, he believes doom has a smell – and it smells kind of like cats).

"Happy Birthday!" they cry in unison, smiling even as Jade glares, lips curled like a hungry feral feline.

"Okay, I'll take the stupid gifts if you walk away in six seconds." she says, arms out. And, because this is such a good deal with Jade, the boys dump their presents in her arms and scuttle away. But Robbie insists they stay close enough to see – to which André replies "Heck no, man, I wanna live," and hurries to catch up with somebody in the next hall.

Robbie watches, awkwardly shuffling his feet. Jade tears apart André's prettily wrapped gift, throwing his hard work onto the glossy linoleum, and comes out with an industrial-size boxed set of Stephen King books. She purses her lips, staring at the grotesque covers, and then smirks evilly as she places them in her locker.

Next up, her nose crinkles at the stench of his gift's home. She opens it, reluctantly, and then her expression goes from disgust to surprise to nothing at all again. She lifts her head, stares at him, and he gulps.

"Shapiro, what is this?" she demands, taking the white-and-red rose out of the box. Robbie shakes – the symbolism of the gift seemed a lot cooler before when she wasn't bearing down on him like a tiger ready to pounce upon his jugular.

"Uh…it's a, um, rose?" he says, cautiously. When she doesn't say a word, just allows the awkward silence to build, he adds: "'Cause you like to cut them up with your scissors. Yeah, er, that's…why." She looks between the rose and him, absolutely expressionless, before stuffing the shoebox in the trash and ripping a blue pair of scissors off her locker door.

"You missed the six-second mark." she says, before shoving past him hard and snipping the tips of the petals carefully, decisively. He rests his head against the wall, and moans – whether this be success or failure he cannot tell.

.

Jade texts him at 11:17 PM.

He doesn't know why, exactly, and her text of _I can't sleep. Tell me about your day, it'll cure my insomnia_ doesn't really show anything useful, other than the fact she thinks of him as a boring person. He sits up in his bed and texts her back, not asking why she prompted the conversation, but saying okay and giving a long description of his day (_girls do what they want – boys do what they can_), including his dilemma of picking a breakfast cereal and trying to scrape the guts of a spider he stepped on off his Adidas sneakers.

At 11:32 after he sends it, she texts back with _Wow, I underestimated you – you're actually more boring and worthless than I had first suspected. Congrats._

And for some reason that proves he's a masochist of some sort, he smiles.

.

Most of his nights afterwards are like any other, with him and Rex in polyester pajamas, no beeping from his phone. Well, Cat sends him texts at one time or another, not often, but otherwise it's all eerily silent – only he has changed, eyes opened with his fingers eager to snatch his phone if it should beep.

There's only one more text from her that ever reaches him, and it's the only text that still resounds through his backbone in chills by the memory it holds: _Com ovr_. He can tell it's urgent, because a) Jade would _never_ invite someone – unless it be Beck, but Beck was cut out of her life now – over to her house, at the ludicrous time, and b) she always writes grammatically correct, even in texts, to avoid dulling her senses so she would "fall ill to the disease of stupidity."

Robbie dresses swiftly, not even taking care to have matching shoes, and he dashes off to her house, a route he's gone only once and that was because Cat has lent him the wrong directions for their movie night (he likes to think he almost got killed that night, when he walked in on Beck and Jade's home-date). Her house is as cold and dark as she's always been, the shingles hanging off like eyelashes on an old face, and the structure sags in the same style of wrinkles. He keeps expecting thunder to roll, lightning to flash, scary music to play, but it's just wasted suspense when he steps onto the barren porch (no rocking chairs here, no sirree).

He knocks, one, two, three, on the black door. A little gold doorknocker resembling a snarling animal of some sort glares at him, but he dares not touch it – everything about this Victorian house just gets creepier with the more time he stays. No one answers the door, so again Robbie knocks one, two, three. Then four, five six. Even seven, eight, nine, but there's no answer and no one to be found. He almost decides to leave, but then a gust of wind pulls the door _everohso_ slightly ajar. Cautiously, he enters.

Inside it's not much better: wallpaper coils, the furniture is scratchy, and the spiral staircase goes up into darkness. It somehow gives him the impression of a haunted house, which is all too appropriate for the residents inside. And then the moaning from up above just curls his toes, because it's so hopeless and ominous.

And, he realizes, it's also Jade.

Suddenly, the fear dissipates, for awhile, and he hops up the staircase in leaps so high he could reach Heaven above. The hallway is dark, frozen in some 1890s era, except for the faucet running in the bathroom. _The bathroom,_ he thinks, and he shudders.

Mascara and blood run together in the sink and on the floor, in bigger proportions. She lies there, a doll strewn across the ground with nobody to raise her up on two feet. There's a phone against the wall, probably the last thing she touched since falling. Her hand is on her left wrist; red liquid squeezing out through the cracks in her fingers, staining the lines in her palm, and it's such a heartache to watch he himself almost starts crying.

Neither says a word. He hoists her up under her arms and leads her to the running water. She squeals at the burn of the water against her wound, but soon she bites down on her lip instead. After awhile the blood washes down the drain and leaves a hairline of a cut (not that big, not that big at all, but those are the kind that bleed the most). Then he dabs with a towel resting nearby, but she takes it and wraps it around to lull the pain until she takes it off. There are stains of black and blue mascara trailing down her cheeks, turning her (im)pure white skin shades of navy, of darkness. Fleetingly Robbie gawks at these tragic stains, and thinks only she can make mascara stains of pain beautiful, but then he goes back to the appropriate emotion: despair.

She crouches to the floor, leaning against the wall. He looks on from up above, nervously shifting from foot to foot, trying not to stare at the firetruck-red scissors lying on the floor, jaws open and ready to snap, kill, break.

She sighs, a whistle that sounds like a sob. "Why me?" he asks, and her head snaps to him, fierce and dangerous; but the sadness can keep her reigned in a moment later.

"If I told Cat, she'd tell everybody." she explains, "If I told André, he'd tell Tori, who'd tell Beck. I wouldn't tell Tori my deepest, darkest secret for all the world, let alone this" – Robbie wonders how _this_ isn't her deepest, darkest secret – "and Beck I wouldn't tell because he's the one person I don't want to know – he thinks I've stopped, imagine if he knew I'd lied." Robbie also wonders how he's never noticed other scars on Jade's hands in previous years and how Beck had been able to keep his lips shut for so long. "The only reason I told you – because it's not 'cause I like you, remember that – is because you're the only one with the ability to keep your trap shut, especially if a threat is involved."

(He considers rebuking but, you know, it _is_ true)

He asks her where her parents are that she couldn't have gotten them, and she scoffs. "My dad's off on some fancy-shmancy business trip because he can't bear to spend more than twenty-four hours here, and my mom's probably in a bar or off at some other guy's house or napping on my aunt's couch drunk. I'm not quite sure what phase of the night she's in yet, but I'd gamble on bar, personally." The way she speaks with such composed certainty (but with underlying spite) sends shivers up his spine, not for the first time around her.

He stays quiet, a while. "My dad left my mom." She swivels her head to stare at him. "When I was nine. Mom was a wreck. She yelled at me, cursed at me…I would find blood in the bathroom for years, just there like a puddle of spilled milk. She always…always asked me why couldn't I be like Rex? Dad bought Rex for me a little bit before he left – with my mom's money of course – and he was always so hip, cool, fun. Mom wanted me to be more like him…and less like Dad." He heaves a great breath, trying to keep from shaking at the horrid memories. "Mamaw takes care of me mostly by now, though I live with my mom. She still has…problems, but they've gotten better." Jade nods all the while as he talks, never blinking and never looking away for an instant. When he's done, she looks different: shocked, admiring, envious.

"Well, my 'rents have problems, and theirs _haven't_ gotten better, so kudos to you." She pats him on the back with fake enthusiasm, and he stumbles forward in shame. When you wear your heart on your sleeve for a girl like Jade, criticism is not far-off.

They fall into a mutual silence. Robbie's feet get the faintest bit damp as the water on the floor soaks into the bottom of his shoes. He stares anywhere but at Jade, and the first place he looks is the bloody scissors lying on the sea-green tiles of the bathroom floor. He asks himself, why must he fall for the girl that makes it so difficult? Why the one with the broken everything – heart, soul, body, mind. _Why?_

As smart as Robbie is, he doesn't have an answer to that one.

.

They fall into a hazy routine of don't look unless I look first, don't speak unless spoken to. He allows himself to sit beside her with that dirty little secret in his back pocket, even as she gazes toward Beck with a lingering love that's all but disappeared for him. Sometimes she uses Robbie to vent the pain: talk it out, scream it out, maybe a whisper. As long as she's not scarring herself in the four walls of a tiled bathroom, he might be okay.

"You miss him." he says when Beck&Tori are laughing giddily tables away, shoving fries into each other's mouths like a perfect cliché couple. She glares at him, momentarily, before going back to knifing a leaf of lettuce with her plastic fork.

"Statement of the year, dingbat." she responds coolly, sliding the crispy lettuce through her lips, but not chewing with much gusto.

"Look, Jade, you've got plenty friends." he says. "Me, Cat, André, seriously. I know he broke your heart, but as upsetting as that is, you've got to let go."

"Who're you to say this to me, Dr. Phil?" she spits, grabbing her plastic container of salad, the croutons flung into the air like teeny-tiny rockets. "You've never even _kissed_ a girl – so why don't you go back to your sorry puppeteer career, and leave me out." She proceeds to walk away, but – why, oh, you shouldn't ask, he doesn't know – he jumps up to follow her. She shakes him off with a slap against his shoulder, and then deposits her trash into the bin, whirling away without so much as another look at him.

But Robbie doesn't stop. He follows her into the empty halls of the school, straight up to her locker as she bangs the door open, seething. "Jade, please – "

She slams the door closed again, and already the mascara starts to moisten. "You don't _get it_, okay? You've never had your heart broken, you've never been in a relationship, you've never felt anything! Okay, so maybe I'm not the most touchy-feely person ever, alright, but I _know_ Beck, I _see_ Beck. I've never had someone like Beck before, someone who cares about me, who loves me, who – who – "

"I care." he whispers. She goes quiet enough that the faraway sounds of chatter in the lunchroom boom like cymbals crashing together. "Beck knew about this." He gestures to her wrist. "But he doesn't know it's still going on. I know, Jade, and what do I do? I do as you ask, keep my mouth shut. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. And when you texted me to come over, I did. You have to understand Beck can't, and doesn't, do that anymore."

Jade locks her gaze with his. He's said his piece – oh god, he's said his piece. He starts to shake all over with her gaze, burning, burning his skin and his eyes. He shakes like he's shaken once before only (on that fateful day his mother turned). Jade's just like his mother: broken, mean, bloody on the hands and on the heart, her chest's seams coming undone with each touch. And he never managed to sew his mother back up (why Jade? Is she his second chance to save?)

Suddenly there's the fierce crash of a body slamming against a locker, and the chapped lips of a strange girl meet his. There's only so much he can do but take it; her lips mold with his, fingers ruffling his black curls, trying to tousle them upward even as they won't go (not as cooperative as Beck's). He wraps his feeble arms around her frame, and she doesn't relent at the touch – if anything, she kisses harder.

"_Jade_…" He murmurs her name against her soft lips, running circles on her back.

"_Beck_…" her whispered reply says. The glass shatters around his eyes all over again, his hopes falling and falling to the ground, because that's not his name. He pulls back, and he sees her recognize her mistake.

(Because isn't that all he is, one big mistake?)

She closes her blue-tinted eyelids over her stare, gritting her teeth together in anger at herself. When she opens them again, she's off him, holding her arms up. The sleeves slide to reveal the flowery pattern of scars cut with precision up her arms.

"Sorry, Shapiro," she mumbles, and she seems to mean it, "but if you haven't figured it out yet, this isn't some blasted fairytale." She drops her arms to her sides, and lets the black sleeves cover her secrets again. "Later."

And he stands there among the shards of broken hopes, cutting like glass into his chest. Burned onto his retinas is the image of her mascara dripping, her blood flowing, and those pinkish scars in some cruel outline of a rose. _"But if you haven't figured it out yet, this isn't some blasted fairytale."_ He hangs his head, dropping to his bottom on the floor.

If only it was, he thinks, if only it was.

.

She's a broken angel, he believes, staining white sheets with red and clutching flowers to her chest. Her fear too strong to relinquish the flowers, to stop bleeding. She's far too beautiful to taint her heart with rough patches and splatters of little _drip-drip-dripping_ blood.

But what can he do? He's – he's just a mortal in her angelic presence. A mortal trying to steal the flowers, to quell the bleeding, but she rejects him every time, because she doesn't want to stop. She wants the pain, wants to cry the black tears, because happiness is just too scary with someone else.

He lies on his bed at night, dreams haunted by a broken angel with white roses in her hands. The white quickly fades to red every night.

And so the mortal man weeps for the broken angel, and the angel weeps for the god. (But while the god can't remember love, the mortal man can't forget.)

.

And runny mascara stains have never been so beautiful.

**o.o...what can I say but, rushed/weird fic for a cracky ship ftw? Also, thought I needed to add this, but the whole mortal/broken angel thingamajig I stole from my own poem. So, the title is technically mine, I suppose, not some song.**


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